THREEDIALOGUES(3) 675
HYLAS: This I acknowledge.
PHILONOUS: By your own confession, therefore, nothing is new, or begins to be, in
respect of the mind of God. So we are agreed in that point.
HYLAS: What shall we make then of the creation?
PHILONOUS: May we not understand it to have been entirely in respect of finite
spirits; so that things, with regard to us, may properly be said to begin their existence, or
be created, when God decreed they should become perceptible to intelligent creatures,
in that order and manner which he then established, and we now call the laws of nature?
You may call this a relative,or hypothetical existenceif you please. But, so long as it
supplies us with the most natural, obvious, and literal sense of the Mosaic history of the
creation; so long as it answers all the religious ends of that great article; in a word, so
long as you can assign no other sense or meaning in its stead; why should we reject
this? Is it to comply with a ridiculous sceptical humour of making everything nonsense
and unintelligible? I am sure you cannot say it is for the glory of God. For, allowing it
to be a thing possible and conceivable that the corporeal world should have an absolute
existence extrinsical to the mind of God, as well as to the minds of all created spirits;
yet how could this set forth either the immensity or omniscience of the Deity, or the
necessary and immediate dependence of all things on him? Nay, would it not rather
seem to derogate from those attributes?
HYLAS: Well, but as to this decree of God’s, for making things perceptible, what say
you, Philonous? Is it not plain, God did either execute that decree from all eternity or at
some certain time began to will what he had not actually willed before, but only designed
to will? If the former, then there could be no creation, or beginning of existence, in finite
things. If the latter, then we must acknowledge something new to befall the Deity; which
implies a sort of change: and all change argues imperfection.
PHILONOUS: Pray consider what you are doing. Is it not evident this objection
concludes equally against a creation in any sense; nay, against every other act of the
Deity, discoverable by the light of nature? None of which can we conceive, otherwise
than as performed in time, and having a beginning. God is a being of transcendent and
unlimited perfections: His nature, therefore, is incomprehensible to finite spirits. It is
not, therefore, to be expected that any man, whether materialistor immaterialist,
should have exactly just notions of the Deity, His attributes, and ways of operation. If
then you would infer anything against me, your difficulty must not be drawn from the
inadequateness of our conceptions of the divine nature, which is unavoidable on any
scheme; but from the denial of matter, of which there is not one word, directly or indi-
rectly, in what you have now objected.
HYLAS: I must acknowledge the difficulties you are concerned to clear are such
only as arise from the non-existence of matter, and are peculiar to that notion. So far
you are in the right. But I cannot by any means bring myself to think there is no such
peculiar repugnancy between the creation and your opinion; though indeed where to fix
it, I do not distinctly know.
PHILONOUS: What would you have? Do I not acknowledge a twofold state of
things—the one ectypal or natural, the other archetypal and eternal? The former was
created in time; the latter existed from everlasting in the mind of God. Is not this agree-
able to the common notions of divines? or, is any more than this necessary in order to
conceive the creation? But you suspect some peculiar repugnancy, though you know not
where it lies. To take away all possibility of scruple in the case, do but consider this one
point. Either you are not able to conceive the creation on any hypothesis whatsoever;
and, if so, there is no ground for dislike or complaint against any particular opinion on